😊 curi & Firebench Debate
Branching from Re: [Dface] Project Steps - FI Learning
We agreed to debate until mutual agreement to conclude or an impasse chain of at least length 5. We agreed to an unbounded discussion which can include anything relevant (and anything relevant to that, and anything relevant to that, and so on). Topic constraints require arguments about why something should be excluded or is irrelevant, rather than being based on a predetermined scope.
The proposed initial topic is my criticism of Firebench's Basecamp posts, particularly in the threads with Dface and Farouk.
We agreed to debate until mutual agreement to conclude or an impasse chain of at least length 5. We agreed to an unbounded discussion which can include anything relevant (and anything relevant to that, and anything relevant to that, and so on). Topic constraints require arguments about why something should be excluded or is irrelevant, rather than being based on a predetermined scope.
The proposed initial topic is my criticism of Firebench's Basecamp posts, particularly in the threads with Dface and Farouk.
You understand that I'm going to put this debate on the web, likely at the curi.us domain, in an accessible way, right? So I'm not clear that refusing to debate on curi.us itself will accomplish much besides being an inconvenience.
Have we had any significant discussion before with you using a different name? If so that might be relevant, and also I don't like to debate the same person twice without referring to prior stuff.
You read https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/debates-and-impasse-chains right?
You should also read https://curi.us/2339-what-is-an-impasse
We have not had any significant discussion before. I'd prefer to stay anonymous - no more personal details than the handle "Firebench". Basecamp provides me with extra protection albeit mild.
The reason I'd like to debate is that I think there's an excellent chance I will learn something valuable from it.
Why do you want to debate?
I'm a public intellectual. It's very hard to find quality debate. In fact it's hard to find anyone willing to attempt unbounded debate at all. I don't like the typical sort of debate where people just make a few arguments and then stop without any serious explanation of why they're stopping, and then they and most of the audience seems to think that's fine and normal, so issues usually don't get resolved and it's hard to learn much (especially after already doing that a few hundred times, so the initial part of the discussion before they quit is usually mostly repeating discussion I've already had).
As someone who is trying to seek the truth at a world class level, without ignoring any existing knowledge anyone has (as most "intellectuals" do), I try very hard to be especially open to debate from all comers. I'm also interested in testing out the impasse chain methodology more. I think it's an important innovation about an important problem. One of the next steps is to use it a bunch and see what happens.
Most "intellectuals" avoid most debates on the excuse of quality filtering to protect their time (I think – they largely won't actually state their reasons). Besides an excuse, protecting one's time is also a serious, important problem. I think it should be addressed with methods like libraries of criticism (in short: write reusable arguments and reuse them, and also gather reusable arguments that others wrote and reuse those) that allow for error correction rather than with giving up on debate because one lacks adequately time-efficient ways to debate.
I think it would be bad if I gave up on the world, declared everyone idiots, and just refused to talk to them. So I've developed some criteria for debate or serious discussion which I think are reasonable, which are themselves open to criticism, and which I've so far found adequately give me a way to pass on conversations I think are bad. (I used to basically debate anyone until the other guy stopped because I value critical discussion and because I think discussion should be an unbounded beginning of infinity. Many people worry my debate criteria would be too time consuming, but for me they actually were a way to help put a limit on debate time. Relevantly, I suspect I'm the philosopher with the largest volume of philosophy debate and discussion experience, by word count, in human history. I've never found anyone who is remotely close and I don't think anyone from before the internet and keyboards has a chance.)
This idea caught my attention. It relates to my other discussion 'people you care for'. There are some other ideas here which also relate to that discussion. Basically I'm trying to create a criteria for 'who to have a conversation with' or 'who is worth persisting with'. I don't have any current cultural knowledge about relationships I feel. Maybe I'm trying to invent it. My current understanding I think is very weak on what the role of relationships is. I think of having relationship with someone as having a knowledge building partner. The above mentioned criteria about worthy conversation partners is pretty much the core of it I think. This is the conversation I want to have. I don't know if this is a new debate or a comment here or should be a part of 'people you care for' discussion.
I see I'm mixing up multiple confusions into one place.
this makes me jealous. But also motivates me.
Here are my thoughts about my last post to
This is a leading question. It gives the appearance of being a genuine question, but does not encourage - perhaps does not even logically allow - the answer "No". It's arguably dishonest and manipulative, because, as the rest of my post reveals, my thinking is that this is the case. By asking the question in this way, I'm trying to persuade rather than trying to verify my guess. It would have been better to state my judgment and explanation in a stronger form that could be more easily criticized. That said, if I were on the receiving end of a question like this I wouldn't have a problem responding with something like: "It's possible, but I do not think that it is the case." and then explaining my reasons. You don't have to be led by a leading question.
The first question here could be interpreted as another dishonest, leading question. The truth is that I thought Dface's trees were not good. I didn't say it directly for two reasons: (1) I was trying to soften the blow; (2) That question (and the other questions here) are helpful, and, as far as I could tell, Dface wasn't asking them. By posing questions, I thought I might help him think in a questioning way he wouldn't if he were just reading my criticisms.
These questions were intended to give him a flavor of how many critical questions could be asked of even a simple tree. My thinking here was that I've asked whether he can see any errors, but it's quite possible he can't. E.g. he might not be aware of the level of attention to detail that could be paid.
I'm happy with what I wrote. I have adopted an adviser role, but I don't see that as a problem, as I have experience. I know that you do have a problem with it: "Please stop trying to teach people here before having any track record of learning any FI material successfully yourself." You are right that I don't have a track record of learning or teaching "FI material" per se, but I do have a track record, in the outside world, of teaching tree writing. If by not having a "track record" you are saying I don't have authority, I disagree with the premise that authority is required to teach.
I have not read every single post on Basecamp, so I may have missed some instructions from you that my advice conflicts with. If so, I apologize for confusing things and would appreciate if you explained what your advice is and how my advice conflicts. If you think my advice is completely wrong, and not just because it conflicts with yours, I would be interested to understand your thinking.
I didn't fully like these sentences when I wrote them. They sounded patronizing and mystical, respectively, but I somehow convinced myself that they were OK. I ignored my reservations and I should have thought more. As I said, I have experience writing trees, and have taught people to write trees, so I have confidence in my abilities. However, I don't want my confidence to turn into superiority or authority and these phrases veer that way. I regret them.
PS I noticed another problem with basecamp. I'm really missing post numbers that I could refer to posts by.
I don't agree that I'm disorganized. I may not be organizing things in the way you prefer, however. I am happy to discuss meta around how to structure the conversation before we actually discuss any particular topic. What are your thoughts on how to organize the discussion?
I don't agree that I'm leaving stuff unfinished. When I search for question marks in your posts in this page, I come up with the following questions from you:
Which "open issues unanswered, including a direct question" are you talking about? Why aren't you being more specific? Are you purposely trying to make it hard for me, so you can create a situation where you declare it an impasse to test out your impasse process?
The only other thing that I can think is that in your first comment you suggested beginning with the issue of potential hostility. In another comment you mentioned hostility and how you noticed it didn't escalate with me. Do you want to discuss hostility further? Is that what you consider to be one of the "open issues unanswered"?
I don't like being made to guess what you're after. I'm sure you wouldn't like it either. Please can you do me the courtesy of being explicit about what I have forgotten if you think I've forgotten something - unless you think I'm completely incompetent, in which case you should just call off the debate.
following up ignoring what i literally said by saying "I don't like being made to guess what you're after." is unreasonable. i didn't make you guess. please stop guessing. you're guessing too much.
does this make sense?
You would prefer to have a very literal conversation of lots of short messages back and forth building the conversation slowly bit by bit. Is that right?
Regarding message numbers, why don't we add them manually?
Maybe it would be better to prefix the numbers to avoid any clashes.
this is a yes or no question. you didn't give a yes or no. i'm not asking for only a yes or no answer, but i do expect and want an answer.
No.
What? Are you refusing to answer my questions? Are you replying to a nested quote not the single-quote?
I'm not sure how to answer the question "What?". I am not refusing to answer your questions. Yes, I was replying to the nested quote, not the single quote.
I don't think I need to learn how to use quotes. I know how to use quotes just as well as you know how to use capital letters at the starts of sentences. I didn't use quotes properly in that situation because I was being lazy and Basecamp's nested quoting is awkward to use.
I'm currently guessing that there's a major conceptual error underlying it. But if it was actually laziness that'd be a major problem for discussion too.
Yes.
Do you know that not putting a capital at the beginning of a sentences is an error in English?
Do you know that "ppl" is not a word in English? And that the acroynm PPL has numerous definitions?
Do you think you should prevent yourself ever making those errors again? Why or why not? What is the principle?
I think you're trying to be pedantic to demonstrate that it's bad. But you're raising issues you don't actually, in good faith, think are important to talk about, which is not parallel to what I'm doing. I too could bring up many minor, unimportant errors, but I'm already doing my best not to.
What you should do if you're unable to understand why an issue might be important is ask about why it matters or attempt to criticize the claim that it matters. Trying to teach me what pedantry is is not new information for me and I think it's based on a negative, uncharitable interpretation.
I was just trying to explain one of the reasons the stuff I'm talking about is important (re excuses and responsibility in debate) but your response did not engage with it. I would like to get to discussing why the quoting issue is important but you keep introducing new issues before we got to discussing what the error was or why it matters, so currently the topic is your laziness. You apparently think laziness is an acceptable excuse in a serious debate and I don't, so we're really not on the same page there about debate expectations and methods.
Related, what I'm trying to do atm is get any subtree at all to resolve. It's a depth-first approach. We may not be on the same page about that either.
https://curi.us/2230-tracking-discussions#15760
One way to approach this is with the principle "error is contextual". Another is with the principle "optimize bottlenecks". I (and others) have written about this stuff. It's good stuff to read about. But if we switch to this topic, it'll significantly raise the expected time to resolve any significant subtree.
I'm not saying you are trying to be pedantic. It was fine for you to raise it, but I don't agree that it's a problem. I do know how to use quotes. You replied "Yes" that there was really doubt in your mind about what I meant. I find it hard to understand why unless you were being uncharitable, but I will make the effort to use quotes properly in future.
Firstly, you're making a guess here that goes beyond my words. Secondly, your guess is wrong. Both of these things are pet peeves of mine. When people write in all lowercase, I find it significantly harder to read. Similarly for abbreviations and contractions. There are so many, and I don't use them myself, so I often end up having to look them up. It's a pain in the neck.
I understand that my quoting in that post was wrong and that you consider it important for me to fix this error. I will make an effort to use them correctly in the future.
When I said "laziness", it was self-deprecating humor. It meant that I did not consider it worth spending the time fixing. I made the decision fully consciously. I knew that the quoting was wrong, but I read it and I thought "Ah, it doesn't matter. That's good enough." I come from a TOC background, so I'm aware of constraints and the idea of "good enough".
I am getting the idea that you think the right way to have a debate is to be extremely thorough - to investigate every little branch, to be very literal - e.g. not humorous, and to take the time to fix every error that you notice. Are these correct statements of your ideas?
This is an open issue. Why repeat a controversial conclusion as a fact? Your attitude seems to be begging the question.
no. only constraints, bottlenecks, decisive issues, issues that are in the way of productive discussion or agreeing on a conclusion, that kinda thing. approximately: only fix the non-ignorable errors.
yes. we need more clarity and successful communication than we have. in that context, jokes (particularly unlabeled ones) are a bad idea.
similarly, when there's a lot of culture clash, different premises, high inferential distance, etc., being more literal than normal is one of the main candidate solutions. in that kinda context, it's important to cut down on guessing what the other person means and be more explicit and direct.
I don't really understand the humor claim here. When I read the earlier comment where Firebench said he was being lazy, I took it to mean that Firebench didn't think it was worth the time to fix the issue, like he says now. I see that as a judgment, and not as a joke. People often say they were lazy when they mean they know they could have done something better by some criteria but they thought it was good enough for the purpose - which makes sense as a thing to think, but I'm not seeing the humor there.
I'm repeating it because I consider it to be a fact and not worth spending any more time on. I'm open to criticism on these claims. I have explained why I did not use quotes correctly in that message. If you still consider the issue to be open, then feel free to explain why my explanation does not satisfy you. But I would suggest that a more productive approach would be to leave it until I make another mistake in using quotes.
literal meanings are a relatively good source of stuff we already have in common.
It was a jokey way of saying that I judged it not worth the time. I'm not actually lazy. I might also say things like "I'm too lazy to weed the garden." but it's not really laziness, it's to do with my values hierarchy.
In my erroneous quoting, the "No" referred to the statement beginning "this is a yes or no question", rather than the statement "does this make sense?". The standard reading is that statements following a quote refer to the outermost statement in the quote.
do you get my point?
Are you saying this issue is a bottleneck that you want to prioritize in the discussion ahead of the other outstanding issues? I find that kinda bizarre from someone who either doesn't know how to use commas or doesn't care, and who has many other infelicities in his writing of varying severity. You're so picky about this stuff that it's really distracting to you, but also you haven't learned and automated a bunch of standard grammar and writing details?
I don't think "ppl" is ambiguous.
Then, in response to that tree, suppose I asked for clarification about whether you were saying "No" to the parent node of the "No" node or not, similar to what I did in the real timeline.
In that scenario, would you question my request for clarification like this?:
No, I wouldn't question it. I would be pleased that you mentioned it.
I think most "normal" people would make a guess that the "No" refers to the grandparent question. Depending on the situation I can be careful and literal (e.g. working on a logic tree) or not (e.g. chatting to friends).
I think that being literal is much better (if all parties can do it). I am very happy to be literal. I don't actually have any close friends who can do it, so I usually only do it on my own. Most of my conversations require me to make constant guesses. And the other people are constantly applying "common sense" to what I said and, as a result, generally missing my points. It's frustrating.
I find it fascinating how I didn't even worry about being careful because I've hardly met anyone who even notices. It's exciting to talk to you. Even sillier than not worrying about being careful was the fact that I then tried to dismiss it as a triviality! I did not engage my brain. Thank you for continuing to hammer the point until I got it.
No, I only have Windows and Android devices.
The issue is not a "bottleneck" in itself. It's something that narrows the bottleneck and reduces throughput for me. I find it significantly harder to read and make sense of your sentences when they are not capitalized. I expect that I also make more mistakes. When I say "significantly", I mean enough to notice the impact.
You're right that I don't know the full grammatical rules for commas. I follow some rules of thumb. It's not that I don't care, it's that I think what I do is "good enough" to communicate my ideas without causing significant confusion, and that there are other things I would prefer to invest my time in.
I'm interested to hear more about "the many other infelicities", particularly if there are easy fixes that I can make. I think my writing here has been somewhat stilted because I've been responding quickly and haven't put much effort into smoothing out rough edges. I also got off on the wrong foot with you and that affected the way I expressed my ideas. I thought that you were being difficult and antagonistic, and I became defensive. Now I get what you were doing - writing literally! - I've completely revised my ideas about you and your intentions.
I think "ppl" is at least more ambiguous than "people". For example, if you wrote "arrgh, i've had enough of dealing with ppl today!", someone who is in advertising might think you're talking about Pay Per Lead calculations, simply because that acronym is used all the time in their industry.
If you agree say. If you don't then I propose we agree to disagree, as I can't see any particular value in pursuing it further.
Why did you use a leading question here?
No, not without an explanation as to why I should do it. I see value in making a tree of the debate, but I don't understand the value of doing it from memory.
Yes.
Revised again (please ignore the previous iterations): Do you agree that your question was loaded? If so, why did you use a loaded question?
Oh, I'm glad you noticed it's not a leading question. That was one of the issues I was more actively considering bringing up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
"What should be done to solve that problem?" is a fairly typical and often fair type of question. The possibility that someone will have to reply "Hold on – I dispute your premise..." is not a big deal and comes up sometimes with ~all sorts of typical, reasonable questions and statements.
One of the main things that makes this better and easier to deal with is making controversial premises explicit. It's hard to object to hidden assumptions because you have to try to explain what assumption you think the person is making (and there's some ambiguity) in addition to why you disagree with it. (And if someone knows you disagree with X, and hasn't yet actually said X, they usually try to modify their statements about X in a defensive way, e.g. by weakening X so it's harder to criticize. That's bias but very widespread.)
I think I made the relevant issue (my view about the laziness being bad and being a problem) adequately explicit instead of being a harder-to-reply-to hidden premise. So I think I did notably well with regard to loaded questions, not poorly.
http://curi.us/2293-using-commas
Note: The commas were not the most important writing issue and I wasn't suggesting prioritizing them (I'm not against learning about them either). They were easier to name and also have a reputation as an issue pedants care about.
No. It looked like a possible breakthrough. But I wanted to continue the topic more (I'll say something later). Not being thorough enough and not doing post mortems are major problems IMO. There's an example of this towards the end of FoR ch. 7. It's a hypothetical dialog where DD keeps explaining more arguments after the person concedes.
Doing it from memory provides information about how much you should be using memory aids like making a tree of the discussion as you go along, taking and reviewing notes, or rereading discussion text while composing posts.
Not remembering something and knowing there's something to remember and knowing you don't remember is broadly OK. Then it's (hopefully) pretty clear to you that you should go back and check.
Misremembering things and not realizing they need double checking is a lot more problematic. Or forgetting things and not knowing there was something that got forgotten, so again no double checking.
Also if you remember under like 80%, even if you know a lot of stuff you don't remember, it's harder to identify gaps or errors. You start losing the overall structure to fit stuff into. (The 80% is a very approximate number. Remembering significantly less could work re structure if your memory is pretty focused on remembering an outline rather than details.)
No, I haven't, but I could probably write something fairly easily if it pains you to capitalize your messages consistently. It's a good suggestion.
The term "ambiguous" does not mean "not perfectly unambiguous". It's not a matter of perfection. Reasonable people in most contexts call things "ambiguous" when the ambiguity crosses a problematic breakpoint. There are cultural standards about where the line is and it's not perfectly defined, and sometimes people have relevant disagreements about it, but often they don't. It's meaningful.
This is related to a typical discussion theme. I've found people often misuse strong terms like "all", "never", "none", "every", "best", "worst", "perfect", "infinite", and "exactly". IIRC you haven't been doing that in your writing. I'd guess you've seen some of what I'm talking about.
Reading other people as meaning a strong version of something that they didn't say (or reading a weak version when they said the strong version) is a related issue which also comes up a lot. It's hard to communicate if e.g. me saying "unambiguous" may be read as "perfectly unambiguous".
Another example I've run into repeatedly, that goes the other way (reading strong as weak) is when I say stuff like "We learn LITERALLY by evolution – LITERALLY THE SAME TYPE OF EVOLUTION THAT BIOLOGISTS TALK ABOUT" and then people still think I'm saying we metaphorically learn by evolution (i.e. we learn by a process that's similar to evolution). Originally I'd make statements like this without strengtheners, and that didn't work, so I started adding strengtheners like "literally" or "exactly" and I've found that doesn't help much.
Anyway, IME, the people who are more pedantic/literal/exacting/nerdy/etc., who don't say "most" when they mean "some", are reasonably likely to read me saying "X" as "all X" and think I needed a qualifier if I wanted to limit it. I don't think that's how English works in general. Basically the default meaning is "most" or "enough to matter" or something more like that, not all. An example is the sentence "Cats have four paws." Some people will say "Hah, I caught you! You're wrong! You think all cats have four paws, but there exist more than zero cats with a different number of paws." No, I actually don't – if I meant "all cats" I would have included the word "all". I still don't think I should have written "Some cats have four paws" unless there was a special contextual reason to give extra attention to that detail.
Calling "ppl" ambiguous is a version of trying to put a dividing line right next to "all" or "none", so the division is between all/none and the entire rest of the spectrum, just like the example person took "Cats have four paws" as putting a dividing line between "all" and "not all". The sort of dividing line that is all/none vs. everything else is a strong line and generally shouldn't be assumed when it's not stated.
Is this epistemologically correct?
Re abbreviations, I don't know which ones you object to. I'm guessing you wouldn't mind "CR" or "BoI" but idk. (Whereas you're more likely to mind "idk" but idk if you do or not.) I already use a pretty limited set of abbreviations and try to stick to well known ones (either generally or well known in the subculture here like "CR").
Why wouldn't it be? I'm unclear on the issue you're trying to bring up.
I don't plan to pursue the stuff in this paragraph, but: I think your writing habits and autopilots are important, and you shouldn't judge your writing primarily but what you can do with editing. Some people make the same writing errors over and over for their whole lives and keep trying to fix them in editing. They ought to solve the underlying problem that makes the error seem intuitively right to them. They do have a misconception in their head despite one part of them (the conscious explicit editing part) being able to get the issue right.
Re infelicities, this would help some: http://fallibleideas.com/grammar
The biggest issues I noticed are about clarity. As usual, a fair amount of it is due to references and implications. A good place to start is by reviewing your pronoun use for ambiguous antecedents. The issue is mostly with references to ideas not people, so some the key words to review include "that", "this", and "it" rather than people-pronouns like "he" or "her". A next step after that could be to consider explicit references that don't use basic pronouns, e.g. "What I said earlier was..." or "The argument about the cats is...".
This sentence was an example of flawed writing that you (or anyone else reading) might want to review and analyze.
I'm questioning whether omitting the bold part is epistemologically misleading or not. Perhaps it depends how you are defining "information"?
I used the wrong preposition. I'm not making an argument for your use of contractions. I'm making an argument against or about them.
How can I prevent this kind of silly mistake in future?
I had problems understanding what "this" referred to in the second paragraph here:
Directed, intentional, thoughtful practice of relevant things. A general pattern is take a habit/autopilot/intuition where you see a problem, slow way down and take conscious control over doing it, do it differently on purpose, and gradually speed back up.
As a loose approximation: Every word you write is written due to a conscious idea you had in the past. It didn't start out automatic or intuitive. Many of those conscious ideas were from childhood and you don't remember them. Many of them are flawed. Having reasons for stuff that you can actually remember has value. It's useful to be able to say in words what your reasoning for something is given a few minutes of thought. It helps you share the idea with others, expose it to criticism, review it yourself, compare it with a possibly-superior alternative, etc. This comes up with tons of stuff. English is an area where old, unexamined policies are particularly common.
There are other issues with the sentence btw. The preposition isn't even what I was paying attention to (and I haven't tried to do an analysis myself).
That "this" refers to the main issue I'm discussing in my post. I'm bringing up the issue of what makes the issue of loaded questions and sometimes having to challenge premises easier to deal with.
I didn't have a specific pronoun error sentence in mind. I don't want to review for that but might notice one later.
Oh you think it sounds non-CR. I think I know what you mean now. It sounds similar to "evidence about X" or "evidence for X".
"about" could be rephrased to "relevant to" or even "relevant to (according to an explanation I have in my mind)" for clearer CR compatibility but I think it's fine as-is. Yes what evidence is "about" is theory-laden. It depends on context, arguments, etc.
The thing is, ~everything is contextual. So I don't think special wording is normally required when making statements that assume some context.
"evidence for" is a more problematic construction. "about" is just trying to interpret the topic of the evidence, which is commonly uncontroversial. whereas "for" sounds like mixing up the evidence with the arguments it's used in. it also speaks in terms of positive rather than negative arguments. Saying "evidence for" could IMO be fine in a solidly CR world, but I think it's a habit worth breaking for intellectuals in our society who learn CR because misconceptions are these topics are so widespread that one should speak more precisely in general. i don't think avoiding phrasing any arguments in a positive way is necessary though, btw.
Correct. I don't object to all contractions and abbreviations. There are some that are part of normal spoken speech and they're OK (two handy examples). And your guess is right; I think that "FI", "BoI", "CR" are also reasonable on your forums. They are abbreviations that everyone here can be expected to know and would be used in spoken conversation between us.
The ones I object to are jargon from txtspk, l33tspeak, IRC etc. To me these are of their time. If you want evergreen content, you should avoid them. These jargony terms tend not to be spoken out loud. To say "IIRC" out loud is a mouthful and would be hard for others to understand.
In my view, there is value in written words being easy to speak out loud. There is value in them not sounding quickly dated. Words are usually written once and read many times. I don't think prioritizing speed of typing over readability is the right call when you are sharing your writing with others.
Oh dear.
When I try to sketch the logic tree, I find I'm actually making two parallel arguments rather than one. Also, it's ambiguous what the phrase "in some of your sentences" applies to—is it just to the capitalization or is it to the contractions too?
I'll try to fix it.
Is this better? Are there any other issues?
I meant: I'll try to fix the sentence.
It didn't change two main issues I noticed.
I've run out of ideas about what your issues might be. Will you tell me?
A parallel argument should be an argument that uses the same logic and leads to a fallacy. Mine, at most, can claim that the targets (contractions and lack of capitalization) would also be covered by your argument. In order to make a true parallel argument, and refute your claim, I would need to explain how contractions and lack of capitalization should not be thrown out. But I actually think they should be thrown out, so the whole line of argument completely fails.
Yes, I see that.
That's bad because it looks like you are saying what the parallel is between: X and Y. But you aren't paralleling X and Y.
EDIT: I copy/pasted an edited sentence. Switched it to the original.
I can make an argument parallel to yours against X and Y.
Though that sentence is problematic too. "against X and Y" reads as a modifier on "yours" which says which argument of mine you're talking about. It'd be better if it said "but against". I'd also change "X and Y" to "X or Y" and maybe (as Justin mentioned to me) "can" to "could".
Aside: In that sentence, "treeing" is a noun. The verb is "matters". (But the gerund "treeing" is based on the implied existence of a verb, "tree", that is different than the verb "tree" that's already in the dictionary.)
ET: You are doing some things that aren't going to work for me. Issues ET: You're intentionally not answering direct questions. ET: You're interpreting questions as implied guidance. ET: You're ignoring what I literally said. ET: You're guessing too much. ET: You're introducing issues too rapidly. ET: (Added later) You think that laziness is an acceptable excuse in a serious debate. ET: Does my list of issues about you make sense? F: You'd prefer to have a literal conversation of short messages. ET: You didn't answer yes or no. F: No. ET: Are you refusing to answer my questions or are you replying to a nested quote? F: I'm not refusing to answer your questions. F: I was replying to the nested quote. ET: It seems you need to learn how quotes work. F: I know how to use quotes. I didn't use them because: F: I was being lazy. ET: What can we do to prevent this laziness problem? F: I don't consider it a problem. I make efforts when I consider it worth the time. ET: There are enough errors without intentional, extra ones. ET: Claiming intentional errors gives you an ongoing excuse. You can claim it doesn't count. ET: Avoiding excuses is important or your posts can't be unambiguously criticized. F: Do you think it worth the time? ET: I'm guessing there's a major conceptual error underlying it. ET: Laziness would also be a major problem to discuss. F: Was there really doubt in your mind about what I meant? ET: Yes. ET: I'm not trying to be pedantic or raising unimportant errors. F: Basecamp's nested quoting is awkward to use. F: I can make a parallel argument (about your capitalization of sentences etc.) F: Did you know that not starting with a capital is an error? F: Did you know that "ppl" isn't a word? F: Do you think you should prevent yourself ever making those errors again? Principle? ET: One way is the principle "error is contextual". ET: Another way the principle "optimize bottlenecks". ET: If we dig into these topics it'll slow us down resolving a significant subtree. ET: I think you're trying to be pedantic and raising issues not in good faith. ET: Your response did not engage with my reasoning. ET: If you don't understand ask why or criticize, rather than trying to teach me. ET: I am trying to get a subtree to resolve (depth-first).
This is a yes or no question and I expect a yes or no answer.
It depends what you mean by "very useful". I need more clarity before I can answer this with a yes or no. Useful for what exactly? What distinguishes "very useful" from merely "useful" in your view?
I think my tree is useful for understanding the flow of the conversation, but needs further processing to be useful as a summary of the key ideas and for checking that agreement has been achieved.
The tree as written shows every twist and turn in the conversation in a concise manner. Concision is useful for reducing the number of words you have to hold in your head at once to understand an idea. Capturing every twist and turn is useful for being confident that you haven't omitted any important ideas. That you're capturing every twist and turn also makes it a largely mechanical process. Mechanical processes are useful for reducing mental load, and for processing (and producing) lots of material quickly.
The tree can be further processed depending on one's objectives. Nodes can be edited, moved, combined, or deleted. Extra nodes can be added, for example to summarize a branch and reduce the need to descend into any particular branch to understand it.
A rough analogy for my tree is a concrete syntax tree of a computer program while the "further processed" tree I described is roughly analogous to an abstract syntax tree. For most practical purposes an abstract tree is more useful, but a concrete syntax tree has its uses, particularly in reducing the complexity involved in compilation.
What criticisms do you have of this post?
I meant to italicize the word "every" in the quoted sentence to emphasize that word's importance in the logic that followed.
The whole sentence I quoted is awkward and can be restructured into a more direct form that avoids pronouns. For extra clarity, I might also verbally emphasize what I mean by "every":
Capturing every twist and turn, rather than choosing which twists and turns to include, is a largely mechanical process.
I was unsure about how to punctuate this sentence. I think what I wrote communicates my ideas, but I don't know if my punctuation obeys the standard rules. I considered an em dash instead of a comma. I could also have broken the sentence into smaller pieces and written more explanation:
In the first of the two comments, I wrote my alternative wording as a separate paragraph with no special formatting. In the second comment, I decided to format my alternative wording as if it were quoted text. My purpose was to visually distinguish my new wording from the rest of my discussion. I also considered italicizing or coloring the text.
Italicizing would have been problematic for the text in the first comment because the text itself contains italics. I suppose I could have substituted bold for any embedded italics, but I think bold and italics have different connotations.
I decided against coloring the text because I thought to do so would make it stand out too much. I haven't seen anyone else use colored text so far on Basecamp, but that is not necessarily a reason to avoid color. A drawback of using color is that when people quote my text it might be inconvenient for them to retain the color that I used.
I think that using quote formatting for something that is not actually a quote is misleading. Basecamp offers limited formatting options. By my reckoning, colored text has more advantages and only trivial disadvantages compared with italicizing and quoting. I plan in future to use color to distinguish such text, unless anyone has a better suggestion.
What? I didn't use "treeing" in the sentence you referenced.
You commented on Elliot's sentence, which was "Treeing the stuff today matters less IMO."
You said, as a reply to Elliot's sentence, "I like your use of tree as a verb."
Elliot said, *regarding his own sentence that you commented on* and in response to your comment, "Aside: In that sentence, "treeing" is a noun. The verb is 'matters'."
Elliot was disagreeing with your interpretation of "treeing" as a verb.
How was I supposed to know that Elliot was referring to his own sentence in the parent quote?
I thought what Elliot was referring to was clear cuz:
1) Elliot only quoted that sentence and your reply to it, and
2) Elliot did so in a short, focused post making a point specifically about the word "treeing", and
3) In Elliot's newer post, the word "treeing" only appears once outside of "quote marks" (as distinct from basecamp quote levels) - in a sentence in his earlier post that he was referring to (and that has two quote levels on it). The "quote marks" indicate to me that there is a reference to a previous statement being made, and the previous statement being referred to appears within the same post as quoted material:
No, the word "treeing" (in lower case) does not appear in either of the sentences.
I would still have had to make a guess.
Do you agree that the phrase "that sentence" written immediately after quoting a single sentence of mine would normally refer to my sentence?
I could make a guess that he was talking about the nested sentence. The point is that requiring that I make guesses is undesirable. Do you agree?
The problem is to do with the pronoun in Elliot's aside. Had he written, "In my sentence..." there would have been no ambiguity.
That's 1) doesn't actually answer my question (which was yes/no), and 2) is, from my perspective, trivially true (guesses are always involved in understanding what someone meant). I think you mean had in mind something more than making a trivially true statement, but I'm not sure what.
No.
No.
I agree that "my" would have been clearer. I found what Elliot said easy to follow regardless.
Can you either do your best about making a good, useful tree right now (rather than posting a sample but talking about how it could be improved later) or, better IMO, watch some gigahurt discussion videos to learn more about how to use trees in debates and discussions?
My answer is "no", it wouldn't have caused me to be able to understand what he was referring to. It might have helped.
Hmm, it seems I don't know what I mean.
I can see that there was no real ambiguity in what Elliot wrote. Although his post had a similar structure to the one I wrote where I replied to a nested comment, mine had real ambiguity. His post only had pedantic ambiguity.
That said, I don't think it was a great example of how to refer to a nested quote.
I don't have any good software for making large trees. I only have software for making small trees. I could probably use a generic diagramming tool, but that would be painful because it won't reorganize the nodes as I insert them. Do you know of any good tree-making software that runs on Windows or in a browser? If not, I can keep breaking trees into subtrees as they get unwieldy. I think that would work.
I looked at one of your gigahurt discussion videos (#68) and you seemed to be either using accurate quotations from the text, or paraphrasing using different words. This is different from what I was trying to do, which was to summarize ideas using words from the original text. I will adopt your approach. I will also do what you do and construct the tree as I'm going along. I know I can do that on small trees, so I don't think it will be that hard to do on a bigger tree. Trees are fractal after all.
The tree I produced yesterday was a rush job. I spent more time justifying the tree than making it. (I don't regret writing that justification, though. I was mainly writing it to practice being more explicit with my logic.) I rushed the tree because I thought I had created a very fast time expectation and that you were waiting on it.
It sounds like you are happy with me taking my time. I'll try to work on it over the next few days. I have other work to do too.
https://curi.us/2311-making-idea-trees
Even if you weren't going to sell your software, it doesn't make sense to put the effort into coding it without checking whether there's already adequate software available to do what you want.
Thanks. I'll take a look. I think I did read that page already and the recommended software appeared to be for mind-mapping rather than trees. Mind-mapping software would probably be easier than doing it piecemeal anyway.
Thanks for your crits earlier. Useful.
No, I know they're trees. I meant vertical, layered trees like the ones in your videos.
This conversation is a massive wake-up call for me about how lax I am about my thinking. I really appreciate you inviting me to debate.
Would you be surprised if I told you this has been the experience of almost everyone here including me. Many people have hate quit on the basis of that. I believe that most people are really bad at basic comprehension. Then if you add on top of that added difficulties of hard topics then it becomes a real mess.
No, I wouldn't be surprised. I've never had so much criticism directed at me in such a short space of time before. I'm finding it exhilarating and also a bit embarrassing!
I wouldn't stay if the criticism wasn't valuable, but it's super high quality (important, detailed, true). The people who quit clearly don't understand how rare and valuable high quality criticism is.
Why isn't it valuable to them? Because it doesn't make their life better.
Why not? Usually, they already have an overwhelming amount of unaddressed, outstanding criticism. They don't need more. They need to get unstuck about fixing stuff that's already in their queue.
Some people have a good time here initially because they find some of the ideas intuitive and easy to learn. But at some point they run into a part that's hard for them to learn. Then they get permanently stuck because they were never great at error correction. They don't know how to get past the sort of hard problem that gets them stuck; they just know how to deal with the sort of problem they never get seriously stuck on. Then, in the context of being and staying stuck, criticism doesn't help them.
There are many other contributing issues. E.g. when people say "That's enough criticism for now; let me digest it.", they usually never again want more. They try to do the digesting on their own and fail and don't get criticism or help about what's going on there.
(There are complicating factors like that dealing with hard problems can be fun. But what the advice means for most people/contexts today is to legitimize e.g. social life, sex, whim, emotions and TV over reading, diligence, work, organization and perseverance.)
DD (following Rand) told me long ago that most things people think are fun are not real fun. They don't count. And so his idea of "follow the fun" basically meant: follow rationality, because only rationality provides genuine fun. But if he meant "be rational" he would have just said it that way. He had conflicting ideas or something, which may be why he didn't advise the public on it – it was a half-baked idea. Partly he meant that rationality can and should be fun, and if it isn't then there's an important problem to solve (don't just ignore that). Now LT is spreading it, partly in DD's name (and partly with inadequate credit so she seems like more of an inventive thinker than she is), without a distinction between thinking you're having fun and real fun. And also without addressing conflicts between short and long term fun – there are lots of ways to get short term fun but run into dead ends that lead to unhappiness later (e.g. drugs or just never getting around to doing anything you think is very important).
If they're overwhelmed, they need to make guesses about what to focus on first, and then seek high quality criticism of those guesses. So, couldn't it be said that these people do need more high quality criticism, but not at the original level? They need criticism of meta-level ideas.
It's OK with me, and it's your choice, but:
In my experience, leaving for a few weeks basically never works. People don't come back or are in a different mood when they come back. They forget things, change attitudes, become more negative, etc.
In general, if you can't fit rationality stuff into your life now, you never will. Planning to do it later is usually an excuse.
I'd suggest trying to multitask. If you work on FI 20min daily, including talking some (e.g. watch video for 15min and spend 5min posting a few thoughts) that's a big difference vs. zero.
Also, it's a minor inconvenience for me to let stuff fade from memory and review it later. But I think that's a much bigger issue for you, both due to less experience at it (so it'll be harder and less successful for you than me) and because you'll forget some things that can't be reviewed. Some of the important information has not been written down, in particular some of what you were thinking at the time you made some errors. Your thought processes are important to post mortems. It's often hard to remember how misconceptions worked in a particular case after you know the right answer, and much harder weeks later.
That requires good organization and other skills they don't have. They don't know how to do that and are hostile to doing it. This is one of the reason my criticisms often talk about methodology. I've tried to say stuff to people like what you're saying in your paragraph (I'm guessing you've read some of my similar writing). But people generally are much more stuck and anti-criticism about methodology. Meta criticisms are the worst in some ways because they talk about being stuck head on. But people are evading about whatever they're stuck on, and don't want to face it, and feel bad about it, which is why they're stuck.
This is one of the reasons for the people who don't know much and have no significant track record of success, but try to do research and create substantial new knowledge. E.g. the people who read a little DD and Popper – but didn't learn it thoroughly and are hostile to trying to do that – and are trying to invent AGI.
When you're trying to make a big breakthrough, you have a built-in excuse for failure, and it's harder to tell if you're stuck or unproductive. (More broadly, just working on big stuff without clear steps and milestones helps people brag while simultaneously hiding how little they're getting done.) If they tried to learn existing knowledge and got nothing done, their failure would be clearer.
The difficulty I have is more about how to stop thinking about FI stuff—how to put the ideas aside and give my full attention to something else. What I'm finding is that I'm in a struggle with myself to stay focused on my work. Finding this group and having this conversation is super-exciting for me—I've been looking for a place like this for so long. It's way more exciting for me than my work project and my subconscious mind is constantly serving up FI thoughts instead of work thoughts.
I don't know how to multi-task successfully at the moment. I'm in a sort of infatuated state. I think having a bit of time out would help me to calm down and be more thoughtful. It would also let me get this work project off my plate.
There's no chance that I'm not going to come back. My worry was that you might decide to call off the debate.
I can do some FI work at the weekend to keep the conversation going. Does this sound reasonable?
And to keep the ideas active in my mind, but not hyperactive (like they are right now).
I've seen a lot of stronger statements than that from people who quit. Sometimes they don't come back at all on their own initiative, but more often just a little bit in a half-hearted way.
People overestimate their self-knowledge about what they will do, particularly regarding an unusual situation.
I've dealt with people like that before. That kind of motivation can easily swing to hatred (similar to loving someone being a lot closer to hating them than being neutral is) and is part of the fuel for the current harassment campaign against me. How does that happen? I don't legitimize the person as one of us. They want my approval and sanction. They want to be part of the group. But they find that I reject them in ways they didn't expect and can't stand. Typical ways this comes up include I don't think they are nearly as smart (or skilled, rational or knowledgeable) as they think they are, or some sort of dealbreaker issue comes up (e.g. rightwing politics, PUA, or criticism of their parenting, teaching, dishonesty or social climbing). Breaks make these outcomes more dangerous because they make the positive feelings less prominent but they do little to reduce the risk of getting triggered. Also during breaks (and just over time) people adjust (falsify, rationalize) their memories of their grievances about me.
People who see my group as Heaven or Galt's Gulch – and then end up being incompatible with it and leaving for some reason – often react very negatively and come up with a bunch of rationalizations about how awful I am to justify why the inaccessible group is actually bad. Rami is blatantly doing that right now.
Anyway, I always tell people it's up to them, and it is. I find they usually listen to my advice surprisingly little given how much they claim to value me at the time. I think that's related to the positive attitude not being robust enough, which is what makes breaks and other things dangerous to it. But regardless, I've been open to discussion year after year. I don't intend to go anywhere and I have a track record for that.
Now Im doing a project with my ps3 where Im trying to collect platinum trophies for 4 games. Im on the last game now.
It's not about me ignoring your advice. It's that I have a criticism of your idea of multitasking every day: I'm finding it hard to concentrate on my work during the day because FI ideas are much more stimulating to my subconscious. If you have advice for overcoming that problem then I'm interested, otherwise I think my plan of doing FI at the weekends seems workable to me and seems like it would achieve the desires of not losing the ideas, while not being overly distracted by them during the working week.
Awfulize means:
I guess you'll agree with me that, literally, your claim is false? But then why say it? You seem upset, which would explain why you stopped trying to be literal. This seems like an illustration that I was right – that your positivity towards me and FI is fragile. You're accusing me of making a pretty severe error without much regard for truth.
I didn't even claim any of that stuff would happen. I said it's a danger and explained some stuff about why it's a danger, and how it works, for the purpose of helping you better deal with the danger.
This is an unreasonable response to patterns of human behavior in our society. And in fact it fits the those patterns well. A lot of other people had this kind of reply too. Variations of: "I'm different!" I never said that you'll be just like everyone else. I made some initial comments. Nuanced analysis could be done about how patterns do and don't matter to unique individuals. Regardless, the experiences I shared are relevant in some ways and your rebuttal is bad. What you're doing right now is like the people who say they need to leave soon (often to sleep) but then keep staying in the discussion and raising new arguments, often of low quality. They want to control how it ends and feel pressured to stay to try to get that.
I already gave you permission but you're trying to get my sanction/approval/respect for your decisions, but you don't actually want to have that discussion for multiple reasons including that it'd be long – and long doesn't work when you're currently trying to partially disengage.
Another definition of awfulizing is:
https://psychologydictionary.org/awfulizing/
I thought that bringing up Rami and other harassers was your mind worrying about the future, rather than dealing with the issue I presented. Bringing up an example of someone who "quit for a month" seemed exaggerated compared with what I was suggesting.
I did read more into what you were saying than you said. It's still hard for me not to do that at all. It's a pretty ingrained habit. I apologize.
I am not trying to get your sanction. I want us to come to a win/win solution—one that satisfies both of us. If you refuse to say when you are satisfied because you think it means some kind of "sanction" then it will be difficult to reach a win/win.
A=Good results at work and on FI
B=Keep the debate going
C=Finish my work project
D=Keep posting
D'=Stop posting
My initial idea was to stop posting for a couple of weeks, finish my project and then dedicate a good chunk of time to FI.
You raised reservations about forgetting ideas and suggested posting a small amount every day.
My reservation was that I'd be distracted because FI ideas are more exciting than my work.
I suggested posting at the weekends, until I'd completed my project.
There are different meanings of "win/win solution". What I think you want would take too long and is unnecessary. (And would also involve you getting sanction. Coming up with a solution that we agree on means I'd think you're making the right choice and means you would have sanction.)
You are not coercing or hurting me, even if you quit forever, let alone leave temporarily for 3 weeks. Nor, by delaying, are you risking me quitting.
Following standard methods of less coordinated action, like respecting rights and each making our own decisions with limited input or control from the other, is a win/win solution, and is the appropriate one here. Seeking more than that is overly intrusive.
(Similar issues apply to TCS's common preference finding. Many people were misled about this.)
Correcting me in this way, without argument, and with a very strong claim, reads as an implied appeal to the authority of self-knowledge, and it makes it so my silence could be taken as a concession. I get that a lot. To be clear, I did not change my mind due to your assertion. I am open to debating my claim. There are issues with prioritizing it above everything else, though.
Yes, I can imagine that. Infatuation is based on idealization, which can swing to devaluation. To prevent a violent swing is one of the reasons why I want to calm down and be a bit more circumspect. I want to read some of your past debates to get a more rounded idea of what to expect.
It's helpful that you have described lots of ways our relationship could go wrong and your experiences with other people.
At no time in this entire conversation have I had any inkling that I'm upset about anything. My demeanor has been what I would call positive throughout. I am not sure what you have read that makes you guess I'm upset. But nothing I can identify on my end corroborates that guess.
Also, why would it matter even if I were upset? Why bring it up?
Arguments and analysis.
I should do a postmortem on that error. Can you explain how to do one?
My "correction" came from a conceptual misunderstanding of FI. I thought that FI demanded strong claims—claims without weasel words. But what I now understand FI demands is honest claims—defensible claims that represent one's view without over or understatement. In this new conception, weasel words should be deleted only when they create a dishonest understatement of one's point of view.
I have tried to make a tree of the ideas you said. Please let me know if you think this tree is an accurate depiction of your logic.
I do not think my response was unreasonable for the reasons you gave here. I do accept that my response was not well argued, however.
Saying "if it pains you" suggests that Elliot's capitalization is due to whims rather than reason. Also, I didn't see any arguments that Elliot's capitalization is not "consistent", just that it's not done the way Firebench argues it should be done.
As an aside, how hard it would be [for one person] to write a text-capitalizing program doesn't depend on whether or not something "pains" someone [else].
EDIT: added text in square brackets to final paragraph.
I don't see why how much time you guess it might take to resolve a topic is an important factor in deciding what to discuss. In any case, I don't think we need to resolve all the topics in our current branch of conversation right now. But I would like to continue discussion in this branch a little longer and I will try to explain why.
The inconsistency of capitalization I was talking about was between messages. Elliot's first three messages used standard capitalization. The next two messages were in lowercase. The next was capitalized. The next was lowercase. The next was capitalized. The next was lowercase. I was unable to come up with a good guess about what rule might be behind the choice of capitalization or lowercase, other than whim. Elliot may have had reasons, however.
I agree. I left a lot of logic implicit in the statement you quoted to the point that taken literally it did not make sense.
As an aside, I just thought of a downside of using a plugin to automatically capitalize sentences: I'd have to remember to toggle it off before I quote anyone or I'd have to get permission to alter capitalization in my quotes.
Anyway, it seems from Elliot's recent messages that he is OK with using standard capitalization and I appreciate it.
If you absolutely insist and would otherwise quit the conversation, we can use a fair methodology for flow control. I advise against this. I think it'll be worse for both of us.
A fair methodology I've used before is to write two things at a time: one where you control discussion flow and one where the other person does. (E.g. you ask one question and answer one question. Or you make one argument and respond to one argument. It's one thing of your choice and one of the other guy's choice.) If a person says multiple things at once in their part, the recourse is to answer only one thing. They can then repeat one that was not answered yet. Control in your half is absolute and you can drop any topic and jump to anything else at any time – if someone wants an answer to something you drop, they can bring it up in their half.
A different way to view this method is: have two parallel conversations and synchronize their speed (they each get one step simultaneously).
You claim that I'm asking for a lot of control over conversation flow, but the truth is you're the one who is intent on controlling the flow by presenting a limited selection of options of your design as if they're the only possible options.
You say the conversation was not productive when you allowed me control. I agree, but chiefly because you steadfastly ignored a good proprortion of my questions—direct questions the whole way through.
I have the impression that your standard of "productive" is "Elliot looking clever and in control and criticizing Firebench". If so, I can understand why the simple line of conversation that I'm suggesting does not appear productive to you. But it does appear productive to me because I do not share that standard. You have still not criticized my reasons or engaged with them at all.
If you don't want to spend even a couple of posts discussing your errors or discussing meta then I'm happy to move back to the quoting branch. I will draw my own conclusions about your attitude to valid criticism.
Your proposed reason for prioritizing something is that you have an agenda for it: you already think you know what the conclusion is. Pursuing a topic where you're especially biased sounds especially bad to me.
Why are you refusing to use a symmetric, fair scheduling system, while also refusing to schedule how i want, and instead insisting only on scheduling how you want to? The only reason I'm getting from you is that you think it will work well. I don't.
Where did I refuse? Where did I insist? You have been reading a lot of extra ideas into my words recently. I offered a proposal with some reasons. I have not refused or insisted on anything. Can you see that?
Why can't you simply explain your criticisms of my proposal and the reasons for your own and let me think them over and respond? What is the value in telling me I'm insisting and refusing? What possible benefit does that bring?
i just very generously did that but you didn't respond. i cannot predict and avoid all the negative interpretations you will tangent over. the "refusal" tangent was particularly odd given that i'd already said it in my previous message, in the impasse statement, and you didn't object then.
You could have omitted the statements about me "insisting" completely and there would have been no detrimental effect. You purposely chose to include the statements. Why?
I want to come back to the question of why you chose to include those controversial statements. But I agree that it's a tangent at the moment.
Does that resolve impasse#2?
Do that and we'll see whether you resolve anything or not.
Elliot:
Firebench:
I think Elliot's logic was strong and convincing, but perhaps on a different matter than Firebench thought Elliot was addressing. Here's my guess as to what's going on.
SUMMARY: I think the problem with Firebench's tree is it makes the key disagreement invisible: Does the top node mean "Firebench didn't say any good reasons" or does it mean "Firebench isn't actually different"?
DETAILS:
I think Elliot's statement about "an unreasonable response" was intended to assert something like that Firebench's statement "I'm a different individual" lacked [good] reasons. Elliot's assertion is that saying a variation of "I'm different" without giving good reasons is an unreasonable statement - even if it's true that Firebench is meaningfully different in way(s) that matter. Good reasons are required because people who aren't actually different in the way that matters can still easily say variations of "I'm different." Good reasons require the person claiming difference to judge which differences actually matter and explain how the person is different in those ways. Firebench didn't do that, which is what made Firebench's response "unreasonable".
Meanwhile, I think Firebench thought Elliot's statement about "an unreasonable response" was intended to assert something like that Firebench isn't actually different because of things like Firebench saying a variant of "I'm different" fits a pattern Elliot had in mind. If that were Elliot's intent, I'd tentatively agree with Firebench that the logic would be weak and unconvincing. But I don't think that was Elliot's intent, just Firebench's interpretation.
I could easily be wrong about either Elliot's intent or Firebench's interpretation. I'm not highly confident. However, if I'm right then I wouldn't expect a debate that doesn't directly address this misunderstanding to be at all productive.
And even if I'm wrong about Elliot's intent and/or Firebench's interpretation, I think Firebench is way overconfident to assume going in that he has a valid criticism and Elliot made an error. That is a possibility, but it is also possible Elliot was right.
You say I'm "overconfident", but the way I figure it there are no bad outcomes. If I'm correct that there was an error in Elliot's post, I will learn how Elliot handles an error (which is something I want to learn about) and Elliot will learn about his error. If I'm wrong that there was an error, I will learn about my own errors.
I did actually consider your interpretation and rejected it. Part of the reason I drew a logic tree was because I wasn't sure how to interpret what Elliot had written. I explicitly asked Elliot if my tree was an accurate depiction of his logic, but he didn't answer. I found this sentence of Elliot's particularly hard to understand:
An interpretation of that sentence could be: "This response lacked reasons to deny that you are covered by the patterns of behavior I mentioned." I decided this interpretation was adding too many extra assumptions to the literal words. His words were about "human behavior in our society", not the specific patterns he mentioned. His words were about a "response to patterns", rather than a response to the claim of being covered by the patterns. If this interpretation does turn out to be what he meant, then I think his expression of the idea lacks precision and clarity. That would be an error to discuss.
The conclusion does not follow from the premises.
EDIT: Removed hyphen I inadvertently put into the word "overconfident" and an unnecessary comma.
(Note that I haven't read the whole thread so my comments are based on some skimming of the last couple of posts)
If you spend time arguing about an error that doesn't exist because of your own over-confidence/arrogance, you could:
1) waste a bunch of time that could be better spent elsewhere
2) convince Elliot that you're not worth spending more time on, and thus *not* actually learn about your errors, because he won't care to spend time on pointing them out
3) convince others that you're not worth spending more time on, and thus not get other people's criticisms and other interactions that you might have found fruitful
I realize that your own perspective is that you're right re: error, and I'm not trying to get into that point. I'm specifically replying to "there are no bad outcomes". there are potential bad outcomes, and specifically, bad outcomes that I think you would regard as bad from the perspective of your own current values and ideas.
you seem to be taking for granted that Elliot will engage with you in an open-ended fashion on your terms (or at least enough to cause you to learn about your errors when you're approaching the discussion in a way/focused on a topic he regards as unproductive). That seems to be a premise of your idea that there are no bad outcomes. You're treating Elliot's engagement and attention as being a free, unconstrained resource. I'm not sure why you are doing this, and I'm particularly not sure why you are doing this in a discussion that already has had some impasses.
It's all contingent on Elliot agreeing to discuss it. I am not trying to force Elliot to do anything he doesn't want to do. I think it's reasonable for both of us to propose discussion ideas and subject them to criticism. If he just wants to teach me then I'll orient myself for that.
Personally, I think once we have established norms we will be able to learn a lot from each other. I don't think the value will flow only in one direction. But if he decides I'm too unruly or not worth the time that's up to him.
I've written an evaporating cloud for the situation.
How about this as a solution?
I was thinking the dilemma is about "what to do first?" but I take your point. I could have worded them to bring out the conflict more strongly.
Task switching with two parallel discussion threads might solve the dilemma and was proposed by Elliot. However, he did not seem to think it would be productive:
And expressed more doubts:
So adopting the parallel discussion solution seems like it would conflict with the preference to "Do things that Elliot considers productive." I consider that preference to be important. I don't want to waste Elliot's time.
But then instead of doing that, Firebench posted something (the one tagging me) which doesn't engage with my proposal. I literally impassed over the scheduling issue, twice, and Firebench still won't focus on it even after that and agreeing to, and he's just posting other stuff, so I don't know what to do.
To reiterate the main issue, which Firebench seems unable to remember, take into account, or address: I do not want to spend an unbounded amount of time not addressing the nested quoted related branch.
I thought about your scheduling proposal. I didn't like it. I don't want to split my attention in that way. I recognized that you didn't like it (see my response to Alisa). I agreed with your reservations.
I decided to see if there were some way to resolve the situation in a better way. I wrote an evaporating cloud and evaporated it.
I don't understand why you think my suggested solution does not satisfy that requirement. Perhaps you haven't understood what I meant by my post. The idea in the solution cloud (the second cloud) is that instead of spending unbounded time focusing on an error in this thread, you would point me at an example of where you have handled a valid criticism, so I can see how you do it, and the debate would move back to the nested quoting branch.
I think the solution I came up with would satisfy all our stated preferences. (But of course you can criticize it.)
it proposes having a different discussion now, about how i handle criticism, and then getting to the nested quoting branch at some later time after that.
i proposed spending half the time on what you want, and your counter-proposal is, for the time being, to spend all of it on what you want. and the very act of making a counter-proposal is itself scheduling something right now for me to deal with, which itself is an unbounded discussion (the one we're having right now) in advance of the topic i want.
We don't have to discuss it. You can just put a link to something and I can read it. I am assuming that there are some examples as I know you debate with a lot of people and I assume you're not infallible.
Edit: Added comma
Edit: to try → trying
you can go first by saying 2 things simultaneously in one message: one of your choice, and one about what I'm waiting on: the gigahurt videos or your tree of the nested quoting related discussion.
this resolves the most immediate problem for me: that the last 50 (wild guess) messages have not advanced what i regard as the crucial topic. you should be aware that, in my opinion, it should not require so many messages or multiple impasses in order to get anywhere – you have been extremely hard to work with.
Basecamp doesn't support long topics (they load very slowly), so continue the main discussion using the two things at a time method at curi & Firebench debate part 2 - FI Learning
Firebench then quoted Elliot as saying:
However, in that quote, Elliot didn't say that following his fair discussion methodology wouldn't be "productive". What he said is that doing so would be worse for both him and Firebench than continuing with the nested quoting topic (which Elliot referred to in the paragraph before one Firebench quoted above).
Firebench then quoted Elliot as saying:
In the quoted text, Elliot was explaining why discussing Firebench's chosen topic first wouldn't work. Any "doubts" he expressed there were unrelated to the parallel discussion threads methodology. So I don't see the relevance of that quote.
I had a wrong idea of the problem Elliot's suggestions were trying to solve. I thought the problem was as per my cloud and he was rushing to a compromise solution.
I am just curious from these quotes (and some other things you said): are you familiar with TCS (Taking Children Seriously) and trying to do common preference finding?
You didn't give an upside here for Elliot, in the case that you are wrong. If you end up being right, there is an upside for Elliot. But what's the upside for him if he puts a lot of effort into the discussion, and it turns out you are wrong? (There is at least one downside for Elliot in that case: wasted time.)
I have heard of TCS, but I haven't looked into it much. Common preference finding sounds a lot like TOC's evaporating clouds, which I am familiar with.
You're right. I didn't say anything explicit about that case.
I think it's possible to learn something valuable from almost any conversation, if you think about how you wanted it to go, how it went and your part in it. Could you have explained something clearer? Could you have asked a question that would have shortened the conversation?
There could be value in verbalizing your rationale for something that you did, e.g. to (re)check it or to share it with others.
I think there's value in sometimes following other people's guesses about errors, regardless of whether you think you're right. You're fallible and people sometimes have good intuition of errors, even if their initial verbalization of their intuition doesn't quite put the finger on the problem.
Edit: Remove unwanted / duplicate words that Basecamp's buggy editor (on mobile browser) put back in after I deleted them.
that's true. but you might learn something valuable from almost any situation, in general, if you think about it. by the very nature of that being such a generically true statement, it's not much of a reason to consider doing a particular activity. you might learn something valuable from baking bread even if it goes wrong, but that's not much of an upside for doing bread-baking in particular as an activity. and even if you just limit the scope of activities under consideration to discussions, the fact that you might learn something valuable from a conversation is not a reason to have a *particular* conversation with a *particular* person.
and then, separately, Elliot has had, I dunno, like, thousands of discussions with people over the years? This ain't his first rodeo, as they say. So he's got a higher threshold to meet in terms of getting a big benefit from his conversation. He's gotten lots of the generic benefits from discussion already, many times over. He also has higher thresholds for benefit cuz he has specific ideas about what methods discussions should use and is looking for particular things in a discussion partner.
It's like, imagine a foodie who's put effort into having thousands of different meals, and now has developed a very particular taste and has very particular ideas about what food should be like. And then you try to sell them on the upside of a particular meal that they have specific objections to with "well it might taste good". Generically true, but rather irrelevant in the context.
You cut my quote short. I gave more specifics about the type of learning that one could gain, namely how to draw more value from conversations in the future. I think you're under-estimating the value of that, particularly for someone who is having thousands of conversations.
You talked about generic stuff and are still talking about generic stuff. You could say about any given discussion that one could use it to learn how to draw more value from conversations in the future. So what? Something that's true of ~all discussions isn't a reason to engage in any particular one. You need to be able to address the issue of why someone should have a conversation right here, right now, about X, on terms Y. What's the value proposition of having a given conversation, *given the values and goals of the interlocutor and the practically infinite available activities open to them*?
I think people recoil from thinking about that kind of question because they don't want to consider in detail that they might not be offering enough value. They want to think of the value offered by interlocutors in broadly egalitarian terms, even though they at the same time realize that they prefer talking to some people over others, value the insight and advice of John over Tom (or whoever), etc.